Grabbing her hand, I formed up a professional smile and walked her off the elevator. We crowded past the hogs, who only seemed interested in boarding the elevator in a hurry.
“Oh, James…” she said when we were clear. “I thought… never mind.”
“You thought what? Stop worrying so much, girl.”
I laughed, but I carefully noted the floor that the team of hogs was heading down to. It was minus one hundred… were they planning to switch at the landing there to keep going down? It sure as shit was a good possibility.
“Hey, I’m starved,” I told Floramel. “Let’s get out of here.”
She looked down, noticing my hand was still clasping hers. “James, I don’t know about that.”
“Come on.”
She let me lead her out of the building and into the streets. Frankly, I was kind of surprised. She’d rejected me for years, and now she even had Raash back to entertain her. Shrugging, I decided not to look a gift-horse in the mouth.
We went out, ate some good food, and drank some good beer. Floramel was still a stiff nerd, but she was runway-model pretty and more like a normal girl than ever. I supposed this was due to the simple fact she’d spent a lot of years on Earth by now.
After eating more than my fill—and polishing off half her plate as well—I asked her what was wrong. “You’ve been kind of moping tonight, girl. What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
She was clearly lying. She didn’t meet my eye, and she ran her fingers over the rim of her wine glass.
“What? Is Raash still freaking out? Can’t he get his tail straight in bed any longer?”
Floramel flicked her eyes up to meet mine, then dropped them again. “Raash isn’t on Earth any longer. There were… incidents.”
“You mean, like, he bit people and stuff like that?”
She shrugged noncommittally.
“Ah, I get it. Okay listen, how about we take a little vacation down to Georgia? I know this great place next to the Satilla River—”
“I don’t want to sleep with you in your shack, James.”
“No? Okay… well, how do we get Etta back? How do we get the files?”
“I’ve already got them. Juan told me how to log in and download what I needed from the secret archives.”
“Uh… you did that while we were in Central?”
“Yes, James. While we were riding the elevator, we went past the Intel levels. I accessed their local routers and did a quick download.”
“Cool.”
I stewed on that for a bit. “Um… Floramel? Don’t you think the computers will have noticed that breach? They’ll trace that down and all—won’t they?”
She nodded. She was back to running her finger over the top of her wine glass. I reached out, and I grabbed her elegant hand.
“Hey… are you in trouble?”
She looked up, and there were tears in her eyes. I’d hardly ever seen her cry. I felt bad and worried. If she was this upset, things were really bad.
“Did you risk everything just to help me out?”
“A debt is a debt, James. You told me this yourself. Once, you risked everything to save my people when we perished on Rogue World, remember?”
“I surely do.”
She nodded. “Consider us even, now.”
“Okay… well… say, you said you’ve got the files, right?”
“Yes. I have what there is to be found. The engrams are fairly fresh and workable, but—”
“We can’t take them to Central for a revive…” I said, thinking hard and fast. “We have to get you off-world, fast.”
“I’m going to prison, James. I’ve been imprisoned on Earth before, remember? I spent my first two years under—”
“Forget that, come on.”
I didn’t need to hear anymore. I grabbed her hand, and I dragged her out of the place, pausing only long enough to swipe my tapper over the pay nub on the table.
We left the restaurant, left Central City, and left old Earth herself behind at a trot. There was no time to lose.
“Why don’t we just go to a Gray Deck somewhere and use the gateway posts to take us to Dust World?” Floramel asked me when we hit the public spaceport.
“Because girl, those places are all government-run. They could all be watched by now. We’ve got to get away while the getting is good.”
Boarding a one-way transport out to Dust World, I paid with my savings, and we left Earth behind.
It was kind of weird, being on a civilian flight. I’d never traveled between the stars without being in the belly of a troop transport.
By my standards, the flight was nice and comfy. There was a restroom for every hundred passengers, and no one vomited or anything. The seats even had cushions. I felt like royalty.
When we reached Dust World, I avoided every official I could. Fortunately, all the customs hogs only seemed to be interested in folks going the other way. Anyone who wanted to come out and live on Dust World was welcome to stay.
Very quickly, we left the valley we arrived in and moved on to Happy Valley, which was where the Investigator lived. It was late at night by the time we’d hiked out to his caves and catacombs. The place was empty, except for a few glimmering lights.
“This place is even more frightening than the first time you brought me here,” Floramel said. “Perhaps that’s because I now fear I’ll never leave.”
“Uh-huh. Let’s see if we can get the old man to help us.”
The Investigator shushed us immediately when we spotted him. He was obviously in the midst of an experiment of some kind.
We watched quietly from behind some gurgling vats. The Investigator was stirring up some goo—and there was something floating
